Golden Globes featured the “Oprah 2020” bandwagon, but hypocrisy was the story.The Left’s Trump Derangement Syndrome now has them arguing he’s unfit.Democrats may rue the day the voter fraud commission disbanded.The way to fix health care is to add free market reforms.Plus our Daily Features: Top Headlines, Memes, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

THE FOUNDATION

“If individuals be not influenced by moral principles; it is in vain to look for public virtue; it is, therefore, the duty of legislators to enforce, both by precept and example, the utility, as well as the necessity of a strict adherence to the rules of distributive justice.” —James Madison (1789)

IN BRIEF

The Hollywood Hypocrisy Awards Show1

By Nate Jackson

Well, we already have a celebrity president, so why not follow up with another one? That’s apparently the biggest takeaway from the media’s coverage of Sunday night’s Golden Globe awards. Oprah Winfrey evidently made a rousing and emotional speech (did anyone in middle America actually watch it?) that had the Hollywood and media elite having all the feels2 (as the kids say these days). From NBC tweeting3 “respect for OUR future president” over a gif of Oprah to all the other celebrities and fellow travelers immediately lifting her banner for 2020, the next presidential election got a lot of attention.

To be fair, Oprah had some good lines. “For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men,” she said. “But their time is up. Their time is up. Their time is up.” Every American should say “amen” to ending sexual abuse, particularly at the hands of powerful men. And to the extent Hollywood really does change its ways, good for them.

That said, after decades of cowardly silence4, the spectacle of a theater full of the Hollywood glitterati giving themselves awards for play acting while wearing black to make a statement against sexual abuse (unless they were wearing other skimpy attire that sends a very different message) was too much for our taste. But our taste isn’t what these ritzy entertainers are after. No, these leftists want to incite female voter outrage5 as an election strategy to help Democrats.

Hollywood leftists are playing their own gross hypocrisy6 on the sexual abuse issue for political gain. For what it’s worth, the Golden Globes aired on NBC, yet there was no mention of Matt Lauer7. But that’s only part of the story. The bigger story is how they’ve turned entertainment into indoctrination8. Our culture has lost its moral compass in large part because of television and movie characters. The lovable losers and serial misbehavers portrayed on screen have led many Americans to believe that bad morals work out just fine in the end. The destruction of the family, abortion, drug abuse and, yes, sexual misconduct, are in many ways the direct result of the moral cesspool sold to us by Hollywood. The peddlers of such immoral dreck include Oprah Winfrey, so forgive us if we decline to jump on her presidential bandwagon.

Trump and MSM Derangement9

By Thomas Gallatin

It may be a new year, but it’s already feeling like a 2017 reboot. To the chagrin of the Left and mainstream media Donald Trump is still president. The latest MSM sky-is-falling freak-out over Trump is a repeat of an old and regularly applied leftist tactic: Question the man’s mental stability and ability. Both presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush where blasted with the same accusations of incompetence. The difference is they both took it in stride and refused to dignify the ludicrous narrative, largely ignoring such media commentary for the foolish gossip it was.

But for good and ill, Trump is neither Bush nor Reagan. From the very start, he has declared war against “fake news,” and his chosen weapon to circumvent the MSM spin has been his Twitter account, where he regularly calls out by name both networks and reporters he sees as engaging in biased reporting. Just last week, he announced that he soon would be giving out awards for “the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media.”

And like last year, the MSM has doubled down refusing to back off its anti-Trump agenda. Touting the pending tell-all book by Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, the MSM has resurrected its 25th Amendment narrative, suggesting that Trump is not mentally stable and therefore should be forcibly removed from office.

Trump responded via his usual outlet, tweeting, “Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.” Trump continued, “Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. … I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star… to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius….and a very stable genius at that!”

This battle might also be the reason Trump has come out so hard10 against his former adviser, Steve Bannon. In order to fully delegitimize Wolff’s book, Trump has taken apart both Bannon’s role in his administration as well as Bannon’s influence upon his presidency. Trump’s tweet last Friday says as much: “Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book. He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too Bad!”

It’s probably safe to say that we shouldn’t expect any easing of tensions between Trump and the Leftmedia. As Barack Obama once opined, this is the “new normal.”

Finally, regarding the MSM’s suggestion that Trump is somehow mentally unstable, Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist noted11, “Trump is unlike any previous president of the United States. Voters knew this when they chose him over Hillary Clinton. And there is nothing about Trump now that suggests his mental state is any different or worse or dangerous than when voters elected him, or when they first encountered him on gossip pages and in reality television decades ago.” In other words, Trump is as he always has been, and America knows it.

Top Headlines12

Analysis finds one million Americans so far getting pay raise from tax reform (The Daily Signal13)

Regulations at “lowest count since records began being kept in the mid-1970s” (Reason14)

Illegal immigrant who killed Kate Steinle sentenced to time served (Fox News15)

FEATURED ANALYSISDemocrats May Rue DHS Takeover of Vote Fraud Investigation26

By Arnold Ahlert

Under the heading, “be careful what you wish for, you might just get it,” the satisfaction27 Democrats, other leftist organizations and their media allies derived from President Donald Trump’s decision28 to disband the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, may be short-lived.

Not that they get it — yet. Thus, the reliably feverish Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) reiterated the Left’s tiresome tropes that ensuring the integrity of American elections constitutes “a front to suppress the vote” and an effort to “perpetrate dangerous and baseless claims.” Schumer further insisted the Committee’s disbandment demonstrates that “ill-founded proposals that just appeal to a narrow group of people won’t work, and we hope they’ll learn this lesson elsewhere.”

Schumer’s assertion that protecting elections resonates solely with a “narrow group” is laughable. A 2015 CBS News poll revealed29 a majority of Americans considered voter fraud to be fairly widespread, and a 2016 Gallup poll revealed30 a whopping 80% of Americans favor requiring voters to provide photo ID to cast a ballot. Moreover, a 2007 Gallup poll and a 2012 Washington Post poll both revealed more Americans are concerned with voter fraud than voter suppression.

So why did Trump shut down the Commission? “Despite substantial evidence of voter fraud, many states have refused to provide the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with basic information relevant to its inquiry,” Trump said in a brief statement last Wednesday. “Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the Commission, and have asked the Department of Homeland Security to review these issues and determine next courses of action.”

Leftists will likely regret the shift and fittingly, they have only themselves to blame. As columnist Thomas Lifson explains31, Democrats made so-called Russian hacking of the election “a national security issue. This opens the door for DHS — armed with far more investigatory power than any commission might exercise — to go full bore at election fraud,” he writes. “President Trump tried it the nice way, only to encounter obstruction. Now it is time for Plan B, and I am pretty sure that Democrats will not like it at all.”

Kobach, who led the Commission along with Pence, was equally explicit. “What’s happening is a tactical shift where the mission of the commission is being handed off to Homeland Security without the stonewalling by Democrats,” he stated. Kobach also hammered reliably leftist organizations like the ACLU and the NAACP, along with congressional Democrats and their Commission members, who attempted undermine its work at every turn. “They have absolutely no interest in stopping voter fraud,” Kobach declared. “It’s truly extraordinary that one party in our system has made clear that they don’t care.”

The most critical aspect of the change? Leftists who often use the courts to get what they want (or prevent that which they don’t) will no longer have that option. “The investigation will continue. And it will continue more efficiently and more effectively,” Kobach warned. “By throwing their food in the air, [Democrats] just lost their seat at the table.”

At least eight lawsuits have been filed27 against the Commission, largely based on accusations that asking for state voter data, much of which is on the public record, violated open-records laws, or breached privacy protections. Moreover, Democrat Commission member and Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap filed his own lawsuit, accusing the commission of hiding information from him. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly partially agreed32, saying the panel should provide him the requested documents.

Despite the commission being disbanded, Dunlap insists33 it still has to honor the judge’s decision. “I didn’t want to go to court,” he told The Daily Signal. “All I wanted, honest to God, was to participate and get an answer to all of my questions.”

Dunlap was also concerned about the change of course. “How many driver’s licenses has Homeland Security issued?” he asked rhetorically. “None. How many elections has Homeland Security run? None.”

Despite Dunlap’s take, DHS’s outsider status is a good thing. Driver’s licenses? Twelve states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Vermont and Washington, plus the District of Columbia — allow illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses. Of those 12, only Utah34 favored Trump in the 2016 election. Only three35 — Washington, Nevada and Hawaii — were willing to provide the Commission with any information.

As for running an election, Americans might be shocked to discover that at least 38 states currently or will soon allow36 voters to register online, and 14 currently or will soon permit voters to register on Election Day. Moreover, according37 to Ballotpedia, 34% of the states have no ID requirement to vote, 24% have non-strict, non-photo voter ID laws, 20% have non-strict, photo ID laws, 6% have strict, non-photo ID laws, and 16% have strict, photo ID laws.

In other words, there is ample opportunity to commit voter fraud.

Nonetheless, Democrats would have Americans believe lax registration and voting procedures, coupled with wholesale resistance to investigations, has a non-existent or marginal impact on the integrity of elections. Moreover, they insist any effort to conduct an investigation that would either reveal fraud — or the lack thereof that would validate their assertions — amounts to “a wild-goose chase for voter fraud, demonizing the very American voters whom we should all be helping to participate — with the not-so-secret goal of making voting harder with unnecessary barriers,” according to Dale Ho, director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project.

That would be the same ACLU whose executive director, Anthony D. Romero, called38 for the DOJ “to appoint a special prosecutor to independently investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian interference in November’s election and for Congress to create a select committee, akin to the Watergate select committee, to ensure an adequate and public resolution of this crisis” — to “preserve our constitutional values.”

Thus, some allegations of voter fraud are “more equal than others.” And despite Democrat denials, the Commission did document 8,471 cases of double-voting in elections in 21 states, and 938 voter fraud convictions since 2000. Moreover, the same Democrats who have issues with the DHS’s current effort to supersede their resistance, had no problem when Obama administration DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson determined39 that state election systems were “critical infrastructure,” requiring federal oversight due to “hacking” concerns — despite no evidence of hacking.

Again for leftists, hacking by extra-national entities is highly problematic, but “hacking” by thousands of potentially ineligible or double voting individuals, including “extra-nationals” (read: illegals), is no problem at all.

In short, the Democrat Party’s stance on investigations of voter fraud is highly selective. Any DHS investigations that might prove inimical to their interests amounts to “disenfranchisement,” while any investigation that even hints at delegitimizing the current president — courtesy of a Special Counsel armed with extra-constitutional power — must be pursued with unrelenting vigor.

How Democrats miss the searing irony that the special counsel’s investigation provides a powerful justification for the DHS’s investigation is anyone’s guess.

Let the proverbial chips fall where they may.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

Excellence for Health Care? Try the Free Market42 — Let’s look at ways that real reform can come to health care and not just address health insurance.The Left Is Politicizing Sexual Assault43 — They sought women who would accuse Trump of sexual misconduct and promised them cash.Video: Bernie Supporters Love the Republican Tax Plan44 — What would happen if Democrats were told that the Republican Tax Bill they hate was actually from Bernie Sanders?

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Burt Prelutsky: On Being Presidential45Jeff Jacoby: Taiwan Isn’t China, and Taiwanese Aren’t Chinese46Gary Bauer: Scandal Update47Joe Bastardi: The Attribution of Cold to Climate Change Is on Thin Ice48Kathryn Jean Lopez: A Different Way of Living and Dying49For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion50.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Burt Prelutsky51: “The Democrats kept insisting that all the savings in Trump’s tax bill would go directly into the pockets of the corporate moguls. That’s not too surprising. After all, they had to say something stupid that the lapdog media could glom onto in order to put the pending legislation in a bad light. What is remarkable is that after the bill’s passage, they kept repeating their lies, even after several major corporations had bestowed sizeable celebratory bonuses on thousands of their employees. Far from being arch villains, as they are portrayed by the likes of Pelosi, Schumer and the fake news media, when companies and corporations prosper, so does nearly everyone else. That would include not only the workers and potential workers seeking employment but retirees and those whose pensions, present and future, depend on the solvency of those companies to fund those pensions. Not to be overlooked are the millions of Americans personally invested in the stock market through their IRAs or stock holdings. It’s no small thing that those people — most of whom are not millionaires and billionaires — have seen their investments grow, on average, 25% in the year since Donald Trump took office. Those people, by the way, would definitely include the likes of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, Elizabeth Warren and Maxine Waters, who aren’t among the despised and greatly envied one-percenters, but are definitely five or six-percenters.”

SHORT CUTS

The Gipper: “We don’t have an option of living with inflation and its attendant tragedy. We have an alternative, and that is the program for economic recovery. True, it’ll take time for the favorable effects of our program to be felt. So, we must begin now. The people are watching and waiting. They don’t demand miracles. They do expect us to act. Let us act together.”

Insight: “The power of morality is the greatest of all intellectual powers — and mankind’s tragedy lies in the fact that the vicious moral code men have accepted destroys them by means of the best within them.” —Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

Upright: “The Left likes to measure progress based how many people depend on government benefits like Obamacare, food stamps and welfare. Conservatives measure progress based on how many people are working and providing for themselves and their families.” —Gary Bauer

Braying Jenny: “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that blue states, athletes, actors, writers, producers, and directors will be punished by this scam of a tax bill, where billionaires get billions, and the middle class gets bupkis (practically nothing) — and an eventual tax increase.” —multi-millionaire Barbra Streisand, who seems not very willing to pay her “fair share”

Belly laugh of the week: “This book is not about my impression of the president. I came into this with no agenda. I continued to have no political agenda.” —"Fire and Fury" author Michael Wolff

Reality check: “I have never felt more conservative and more defensive of the middle of the country than I have before I started working on [The View].” —Meghan McCain

And last… “Looking forward to 2020 presidential campaign when we learn that the entire problem with a celebrity president is that we want nice inexperienced TV stars running the country, not mean inexperienced TV stars.” —David French

Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm’s way in defense of Liberty, and for their families. We also humbly ask prayer for your Patriot team, that our mission would seed and encourage the spirit of Liberty in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.